I wish to apologize to those looking for me
at the last two meetings, as I was not able to attend due to the
birth of our new twin daughters and the recovery of one of them
from a digestive problem which required addiitonal
hospitalization. Hopefully, things will return to normal soon...

HP Promises Fulfilled: HP49
Advanced Users Guide

As promised, the Advanced Users Guide is
beginning to appear on HP's web site. The initial chapter,
covering the CAS (Computer Algebra System) is available for
download in Acrobat .pdf format from
http://www.hp.com/calculators/products/manuals/49g/cas.pdf, with
other chapters to follow. This is the first part of the must-have
document for all who wish to do any serious work on this
calculator.

HP Promises Fulfilled II: HP49
Serial Interface Software

A promise made by Hewlett-Packard at the
August Handheld Conference in Vancouver, Washington was that soon
we would have free software to allow flash ROM updates to the
HP49 operating system. Just recently, this promise was kept, as
they posted the new Serial Interface Kit software on their
website at
http://www.hp.com/calculators/graphic/link/HPComm-30r2.zip. Along
with this, the version 1.10 of the HP49 ROM was also posted, so
users could update their recently-purchased machines, all of
which came with version 1.05. The ROM upgrade appears at
http://www.hp.com/calculators/graphic/rom/hp49g-1.10.flash on the
web. In addition, the comp.sys.hp48 newsgroup has been
percolating with messages from the HP ACO development team,
promising all kinds of improvements and bug fixes in future
versions. (News flash: now you can download the beta version of
version 1.14: find it at
http://www.hp.com/calculators/graphic/sdk/beta.html)

Promises III: HP49 SDK Released

Another hot topic at the HP Conference was
the HP49 Software Development Kit which was to be released for
free to the world this month. They came through with this one as
well, with the release available at
http://www.hp.com/calculators/graphic/sdk which includes not only
the kit, but the source code plus a large help file. This is
quite a turnabout of attitude for the calculator folks, and
hopefully it will spawn a good deal of third- party support.

Even More: A Free HP49 Emulator

In addition to all of the above, HP even
has made available an HP49 emulator for general use, probably for
people to try the calculator before buying. This may be found at
http://www.hp49gcompetition.com on the web. The goodies just keep
on coming.